single hobbits (put a crown on it)
by zedille
Summary: After the BotFA, Blueberry Baggins, engaged to Thorin and preparing for the wedding, tries to figure out what her married name will be as Queen Under the Mountain, so she can buy more monogrammed spoons. Take that, Lobelia. (Genderswap, everybody lives AU, meta crackfic)


This fic is three years late, but I finally got my act together enough to finish it up. Written in tongue-in-cheek tribute to naming trends in this fandom.

Thanks (and apologies), as always, to my whole Company — B., E., K., K., L., M., & M. Dedicated to **solrosan** , who I know will really appreciate this :P

* * *

Blueberry Baggins had a problem.

She had gone on an Adventure, stopped some Trolls, visited with Elves, broken out thirteen dwarves from a different bunch of Elves, found the Arkenstone, riddled with (and burgled!) a Dragon, and stopped a war. She had fallen in love with Thorin Oakenshield, and helped restore him to his rightful throne as King Under the Mountain. They were to be married. She would be his Queen.

But what would her married name be?

Blueberry frowned at her pile of parchments. It was simpler in the Shire, obviously: upon marriage, a gentlehobbit took the surname of her husband and the family she was joining. Blueberry had always thought it was rather romantic, really.

The problem, of course, was that dwarves did not seem to have a surname the way they did in the Shire. Thorin was Thorin Oakenshield, or Thorin son of Thráin, or Thorin of the line of Durin, or Thorin King Under the Mountain. Which was all very well, but it didn't make for a very good surname:

 _Blueberry Oakenshield_?

That sounded like some sort of muffin, probably with oat meal in it, like the ones that Blueberry's mother used to (try to) make.

 _Blueberry Daughter of Thráin_?

But Blueberry wasn't actually his daughter.

 _Blueberry Daughter-in-law of Thráin_?

That was even worse.

 _Blueberry Queen Under the Mountain_?

That would be true enough (though she wasn't sure if her title was properly _Queen Consort_ or _Hobbit Consort_ or what), but it would hardly fit on her new silver teaspoons.

And she had wedding invitations to send, and monogrammed handkerchiefs and linens and towels and spoons (oh, so many spoons! Lobelia could just try stealing them now) to order, and the courier to the Shire was leaving tomorrow. If she wanted Hobbit guests at her wedding next year, the invitations had to go out now, before the winter snows closed the mountain passes.

Well, her mother had always been known as Belladonna Took, even though she had married into the Baggins family. Perhaps Blueberry could keep her own name? She scribbled it out on a corner of her parchment:

 _Blueberry Baggins, Queen Under the Mountain_

 _Queen Blueberry Baggins_

Functional, if a bit clumsy, she thought critically. But then again, if she was keeping her own name, what was the point of ordering new sheets and handkerchiefs and so on? She could just use her own, the ones she had left behind in the Shire. If she got someone to polish them up and stamp some crowns on the handles, no great difficulty in a mountain full of dwarves, that would be the end of it.

(As long as Lobelia hadn't stolen them all. Blueberry doubted there were any of her spoons still left in Bag End. Never mind, she would have to order some new ones.)

Lobelia (née Bracegirdle) was only Lobelia Sackville-Baggins because Otho had decided to take on both the surnames of his father Longo Baggins and his mother Camellia Sackville. Their son Lotho could therefore theoretically have been Lotho Bracegirdle-Sackville-Baggins. Blueberry thought about adopting this philosophy herself, but rejected it almost immediately. Her hypothetical children with Thorin would have enough trouble being called hobarfs or dwobbits without also having to deal with some terrible double-barrelled name along the lines of _Baggins-Oakenshield_ or _Oakenshield-Baggins_ ( _Bagginshield_? _Oakenbaggins_?), or _Baggins Son Or Daughter of Thorin of the Line of Durin_ , or whatever.

Blueberry sighed and pushed her pile of parchments away. Clearly she wasn't getting anywhere with this line of thought, so it was time to switch to a more enjoyable one. Thorin had left the catering arrangements of their wedding to her discretion, and Kíli and Tauriel had volunteered to help her set menus that would be acceptable to dwarfish and elvish palates as well. Today, they had arranged for the chefs of Lake-town to come showcase their art, with delicacies salvaged from the Master's private stores and the harvests from the newly established farms.

Kíli and Tauriel were already waiting in the kitchen when Blueberry arrived, seated around a table loaded with dishes. Blueberry sat down in an open chair, and they all settled down to the business of eating.

There were biscuits baked with butter, that Blueberry would have been proud to serve on her table at Bag End; and meats wrapped in flatbreads; and noodles drenched in a heavy tomato sauce (how Blueberry missed the tomato patch in her own garden!) There were vegetables stewed in pork and bacon; and loaves made of ground corn, which Kíli thought to be cram at first, but proved to be more flavorful; and a platter of some sort of red shellfish, which looked a little like the crayfish in the lakes of the Shire, but were much larger. There were sauces made from spicy peppers that burned; and liqueurs of varying flavors; and wines that fizzed; and teas brewed strong and dark. To finish up there was fresh stone fruit, sweet and juicy; and cakes of all sorts; and confections created from brightly colored sugars that melted slowly in the mouth.

"This is quite good," said Tauriel, pointing to the flasks of honeyed lemon water from Lake-town. Blueberry made a note; Tauriel rarely indicated she liked anything, and Blueberry liked the mixture of tart and sweet. She should send the recipe home to the Shire, possibly with the courier leaving tomorrow —

Right. Blueberry sighed as she shuffled through her parchments of notes. The sheet with her potential married names glared at her accusingly.

"What's wrong, auntie?" said Kíli, who had taken to the news of her pending marriage to his uncle with a little too much glee. Never mind that _he_ was actually twenty-six years older than her.

Blueberry grimaced. "The courier to the Shire is leaving tomorrow, and I still don't know what my married name will be. What will I put on the wedding invitations? And my spoons?"

"Spoons?" said Tauriel blankly. She looked at her own spoon, lying abandoned on her plate. Right, Blueberry had told the dwarves about Lobelia's particular habits (many times!), but Tauriel hadn't been around for that.

"She wants spoons with her name on them so her magpie of a cousin doesn't steal them," said Kíli.

Tauriel only looked more confused. "Is thievery of eating implements so common among halflings? Or are spoons particularly difficult to come by? You will be a queen of Dwarves — surely you could just have more spoons made?"

"You're right, the spoons aren't really the problem. What do I have stamped _on_ them?"

"Have you spoken about this to my uncle?" asked Kíli.

"Well, no," Blueberry confessed. "He's always so busy with the reconstruction, and it seems so frivolous a question if I should be Blueberry Oakenshield or Blueberry Daughter-in-law of Thráin or I don't know what."

"'Blueberry Daughter-in-law' — _what_?"

Blueberry passed over her parchment, and Tauriel and Kíli took it and smoothed it out on the table.

"Aunt," said Kíli, delicately. "Perhaps this is how things are done in the Shire, but here — I, uh — Dwarf queens — Blueberry isn't —" He gestured sharply at the parchment.

"I believe your soon-to-be-nephew wishes to say that _Blueberry_ is not a very dwarfish name," Tauriel said. "The naming patterns of halflings and elves seem to be akin, but what is suited for a hobbit or an elf as the lover of a dwarf may not be as suited for a queen among dwarves."

Tauriel, of course, was the lover of a dwarf, and if things kept on as they were, she would be a princess among dwarves. Evidently there were fewer standards for the nomenclature of princesses. Blueberry's parents had considered naming her Bambi, but somehow she doubted "Bambi Baggins" would be any more acceptable as a name for a dwarf-queen.

"As you know, Dwarf women are few, and we keep them close. Our queens have not appeared in the histories of other peoples — you will be the first — but they have traditionally taken on a regnal name, by which they are listed in the genealogies of our folk." Kíli paused. "I can have Ori write you up a list from the Royal Archives — or wait, you don't have the time, do you? Let me see what I remember from my lessons…"

He reached for a sheet of parchment and a quill, and began scribbling away. Blueberry watched in dismay as Kíli wrote; the names bristled on the page in an intimidating mass of consonants and diacritics. Thorin had been working on teaching her Khuzdul, and she could more or less read the Cirth runes phonetically now, but that was of little help now when she had no idea what any of the names meant.

"Here you are, auntie," said Kíli when he was done. He passed the parchment back, and Blueberry looked it over and pointed at the one with (as far as she could tell) the most vowels. "What does this one mean?"

Kíli looked over her shoulder. "A good choice, auntie! It means… what is it in Westron … the little insect, the ones that buzz — "

"Fly?" said Blueberry, rather dubiously. She had no desire to be Queen Fly, in any language.

"No, the fat ones, with little hairs—"

"Surely not a spider?" said Tauriel, valiantly fighting a smile.

"The ones that make honey — bees! That's it, a bee." Kíli pounded the table triumphantly.

"You couldn't have started out with the fact that it makes honey?" Blueberry said. "And anyway — bee? That sounds more like a good Hobbitish name, or maybe an Elvish one, than a Dwarf name."

"Technically it means queen bee — you know, the leader. But bees are considered a good role model for dwarf women. They're industrious in producing honey for the hive, and they have a bit of a _sting_ — " Kíli winked.

Blueberry considered it. Anything was better than "Blueberry Daughter-In-Law of Thráin", and the dwarfish name had enough vowels in it that it might be halfway pronounceable by her Hobbit guests.

The wedding invitations went out the next day.

* * *

 _you are cordially invited to the wedding of_

 _THORIN, son of Thráin, of the line of Durin, also called OAKENSHIELD_

 _BLUEBERRY, daughter of Bungo, of the line of Baggins, formerly of the Shire, retired BURGLAR;_

 _and the coronation of their majesties_

 _THORIN II, KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN_

 _BEYÔNCÉ BAGGINS, QUEEN UNDER THE MOUNTAIN_

 _Refreshments will be served._

* * *

Extended author's notes forthcoming on Tumblr, as usual.

Fic authors have used an astounding variety of names for genderswapped Bilbo Baggins; to my knowledge, no one has actually used "Bambi" or "Beyonce". (Yet.)

Regretfully, I do not own the beyoncebaggins Tumblr URL, I only wish I did.

Foods, besides the obvious, taken from spoonuniversity dot comn/ lifestyle / every-food-in-the-formation-music-video-because-beyonce and foodbeast dot com / news / 19-times-beyonce-lyrics-made-us-hungry and paraphrased. In order: biscuits, gyros, spaghetti with Ragú sauce, collard greens, cornbread, (red) lobsters, hot sauce, tequila/whiskey/Baileys, champagne, tea, peaches, cake, Skittles and Jolly Ranchers, and lemonade.

After vigorous dithering between dwarfish/dwarvish/dwarrow and dwarfs/dwarves/dwarrow, I went for the first and second options, though I believe fandom prefers "dwarrow"? To my knowledge, no Khuzdul translation of the word "bee" exists; therefore I propose the triconsonantal root √ **B-N-S**. Feel free to let me know how off I am :P


End file.
